Innocent Rules Unit Evaluation

In general, characters are ranked according to how well they perform over the course of the game. If a character can succeed in the harder parts of the postgame, then they'll place more highly as a result, vice versa for the other way as well. The evaluation also focuses more on the inherent traits for a party member (i.e. without Mana Benefit), as if they were prepped for the endurance dungeon.

For tier criteria:
S tier warps game progression around them, these characters have extremely efficient skill trees, and iconic, unique builds
A tier are powerful picks, they have strong abilities and characteristics that put them above other characters, usually play a critical role in strategies
B tier are good characters that have strong mechanics backing their placing. They're slightly less flexible than the chars in the above tiers, but they're still reliable
C tier - One-trick ponies that don't perform well in their archetype, or jack-of-all-trades characters that spread themselves too thin
D tier - Incoherent and unfortunate design

Terminology:
Element Stacking - Abusing multiple elemental additions from passives and equipment, "stacking" these with character passives that boost elemental damage, and then pairing this with other elements that target an enemy's weakness

Element Stacking Example:
1. Chimera equips a postgame weapon that grants Water element to her nonelemental attacks; we'll focus on her using Quasar, a 600 Power nonelemental Magical attack.
2. The Shark uses Great Wave to boost water attacks by +20% for the entire party.
3. The Snake uses her special skill to increase ATK/MATK by +10% and add the Ice element to all nonelemental attacks for the party.
4. Chimera's Quasar is now a 600*1.2*1.1=792 Power Magical Attack that has both Water and Ice elements added to it.
5. Let's assume an enemy takes 1.5x damage from an attack that targets their elemental weakness.
6. If Chimera's Quasar hits an enemy that's weak to either Ice or Water attacks, then the enemy would receive a 792*1.5=1188 Power Magical attack.
7. To sum up the total multiplier from element stacking, we compounded 3 damage boosts in steps 2, 3, and 5 to get a gross multiplier of 1.2*1.1*1.5=1.98x to Quasar's damage.

Redirection Counter Transfer (RCT) - Technique to trigger counter effects using Robo Knight's redirection passive. The Robo Knight uses a skill that affects state of all allies (all party buffs, Wide Block and other similar effects, etc.) and then the enemy attack is redirected to the Robo Knight, at which point counter effects will proc from each ally that was affected by the support skill from Robo Knight. For example, the Shark usually counterattacks after being hit by a physical attack. With the Robot Knight, she can cast Wide Block on all allies, then an enemy attacks with a physical AoE. This AoE can be redirected away from the Shark to the Robo Knight, and although the Shark doesn't get hit, she will still activate the counterattack as though she were hit by a physical attack. This also works if the Robo Knight evades during the redirection.

Summarizing a successful RCT activation with the setup above:
Robo Knight uses Wide Block (Decreases all Physical and Magical damage by 25% for all allies) -> Enemy attacks the Shark -> attack gets redirected to the Robo Knight -> Shark triggers the counterattack

Personal Accessory - A unique accessory that can only be equipped by the party member race it matches to. Generally, this enhances the playstyle of the party member, focusing on their strengths as well as weaknesses. In some cases, it can completely distort the way the character can be played.

Special skill - A skill that can only be used once in a battle until you recover your party at a Transfer Sword. These are obtained in a postgame area after you've invested into Mana Benefit level 10 for your party members. These are very powerful skills that carve out a special niche for the character and can significantly help in some of the hardest battles in Innocent Rules and by extension the entire SEQUEL series.

Characters:

Ino:
- One-trick pony to spam Communion by inflating Spirit stat, Communion will almost always outdamage ATK/MAG builds
-- Optimal Communion build leaves 35 skill points left, can invest in either healing, the auto-revive, or light attacks
- Percentage healing is not good, too much skill point investment for marginal gains + only passives are really that useful on the healing tree
- Light Attacks and auto-revive are fairly good
-- Passives side could be good for certain boss fights in the Pit of 50 Trials AKA endurance dungeon
-- Ino can at least run a hybrid Attack+Magic build that can stack with elements for bosses in the Pit
- Because Ino is very geared towards Physical attacks, he gets utterly hard-countered by last two Ovitri bosses and Stratum 5 Pit bosses
- Special skill conflicts with Incite by making enemies prioritize their attacks onto Ino, and it only reduces physical damage by -75%, not good
- #1 barrier to party flexibility, you can't switch him out or reorder his position in the party, so some party comps become unviable or impossible to create
-- This prevents the Barbarian/Robo Knight from becoming even better with the Fishing Rod/Redirection Passive ability, respectively
- Invincibility gimmick is good in few cases, but is hard-countered by sure-hit attacks, relevant for the hard bosses
- Can element stack in the postgame with the Windy Hat giving +20% damage for Wind Attacks, can combine this with the Brand that gives Wind Attacks and +20% Spirit with the enchantable MAG+ATK weapon skill on the staff
-- This actually outdamages the +1 Exile Armor when factoring the percentage bonus and with all buffs up can start outdamaging Starfall, especially on element weak bosses
-- Only big downside is that it costs TP, but it can be worked around
- Weapons are good, Fishing Rod is incredible for redirecting attacks while working off TP to recover easily
Ranking: Mid A or Low A

Fiede:
- Can reach 100% physical evasion with optimal postgame equipment (no +1 needed), Shadow buff, and 20% party evasion buff
- Has a buffed version of Incite that can be targeted onto allies and costs TP, making it essentially infinite reuse as long as Fiede is revived after being overkilled to restore TP. The targetability is more flexible than Incite Shuffling for tanks in the older games. Also still Preemptive, making this almost as good as pre-nerf Incite.
-- While targetable Incite is good, it requires Fiede to be hit with attacks and that she's in the party, unlike older games you can't option select into multiple Incite casts with multiple tanks to guarantee that the boss is Incited. She's less flexible as a result
- Dark skill crystal is great for boosting her Dark attacks by +20%, but she doesn't have any other elements to take advantage of, aside from the Fire weapon skill boosting MATK. Element stacking on her is possible but not as effective as some other characters: i.e. you can give her the Windy Hat and have her use Elder Storm as well, but she can't get element boosts for both Dark and Wind on nonelemental attacks at the same time.
- Has Preemptive casts on Dark skills, but this is situational
- Special skill is serviceable, doubling stats is cool as well as having 50% HP regen, but the 50% SP regen is useless, this should have been TP, but then that would be too good.
- Dark Skill Crystal is good for element stacking in general for other party members
- Race Passive: Increased Dark element resistance by +25% and Light element resistance down by -25%, decent defensive bonuses for the character
Ranking: Low A to High B

Barbarian:
- Support character with recovery/regen, accuracy debuffs and Hide (but Hide is still strictly inferior to Incite)
-- Her own skills aren't too good, will need other skill crystals to be better
-- Accuracy debuff can be situationally good
-- Ambush as finisher in Hide status is not good, inferior to Wave of Myth. Costs too much TP for a 300 Power move, and requires the Hide state to work. Don't know if the sure-hit status is very good, considering that sure-hit isn't a necessary or useful property on the player side
- Race Passive: Biggest strength for them is the ability to equip Ino's weapons, this opens up different possibilities, even if some of those are only available on NG+
-- Star Dragon's Radiance + Wave of Myth are interesting weapon skills to use on her, but this disables Communion Ino on a fresh NG playthrough, and her Wave of Myth still isn't as powerful as Ino's, better for all-rounding stats with the Radiance buff
-- Fishing Rod is still very good to use with her if we just need to keep Ino alive.
- Special skill is amazing for burst strats by increasing Physical and Magical damage dealt on all enemies by +45% for 1 turn, easiest to pair her up with the Unknown + Doggo and annihilate the enemy
-- Another reason why physical is still so strong in IR, accounting for Mad Struggle + element stacking mechanics with nonelemental element physical skills
- Physical skills still generally have better multipliers for base Attack Power, passives, and buffs
- Personal Accessory is not very good, AGI boost is whatever, and SP cost reduction isn't too relevant for her playstyle
Ranking: Mid B to Low B

Doggo:
- Can reach 100% physical evasion
- Attacker that has huge problems with SP, forced to rely on TP skills that have great multipliers and weapon skills.
- Has a fairly powerful Personal Accessory that boosts their TP attacks by +50%, can be very useful depending on the enemy
- Special skill fills the same niche as the Barbarian: Great for burst strats by boosting ATK and AGI by +50% for themselves and another ally, gives an attacker a good chance to outspeed the enemy
- Due to their fairly limited movepool that doesn't allow for much flexibility outside of their niche, they're only a decent, selfish attacker
- Race Passive: Increased Earth element resistance by +25% and Water element resistance down by -25%, decent defensive bonuses for the character
Ranking: Low B to High C

Broken Robot:
- A somewhat unique attacker that can heal with HP regen, and lifesteal enemies with Mana Grasp
- She will struggle with healing from items/ally skills due to her passives and Personal Accessory boosting HP regen at the cost of reducing active healing potency (With Race Passive: can reach up to 30% natural HP regen)
- Has an interesting attack called Life Bomb, which is a physical attack that ignores enemy defense and does damage equal to approximately their current HP
-- This can be increased by HP-increasing buffs (namely from Vital UP, Ant Queen's special skill to double HP)
-- Can be element stacked
-- Also can target enemy weaknesses
-- Costs a relatively low 25 TP
-- Probably can combo well with the Barbarian's special skill
- Malfunction gives them the Safety Released buff, this triples her ATK stat in exchange for only being able to perform normal attacks
-- Combining passives, this essentially makes her attack with a 360 Power Skill every turn until the buff is removed.
-- Unfortunately, this skill is very inflexible with the special skill, once Malfunction is used, her actions immediately end and she can't issue any further extra actions during the turn
- Her special skill is interesting: She nullifies damage for the turn and is granted an extra 4 actions on the next turn. So she can then act 5 times in 1 turn once per battle.
-- Malfunction is bad with this skill, it cannot combo into the special skill if both are used in the same turn; however, this can potentially combo well with Life Bomb if you build the party towards it.
-- Using the Greatsword's weapon skill can guarantee 4 crit Life Bombs, along with any other physical damage modifiers and HP modifiers
- With her potential, she lands around the Doggo in terms of usability, but can't be higher due to some inflexibility
Ranking: Low B to High C

Mimic:
- First thing: an inferior Unknown that has the same attacker design with nerfed skills, worse crit rate, worse speed (Unknown can get quadrupled speed), worse ATK passives, nerfed Personal Accessory and special skill (2000 Power and disables skills on the subsequent turn), and the lack of an HP-restoring/tanking gimmick
-- Ironically, they're both secret characters
-- If you're a pirate copy of the best DPS in the game, your design will still put you above the plethora of other physical attackers in the game.
- Has a unique debuff when they normally attack an enemy, it increases physical damage by +5% for the rest of the battle
-- Better than nothing, and can help other physical attackers, but committing a turn to attack normally will make the Mimic lose out compared to the best physical attackers
- Still has decent physical skills and boosting options compared to characters like the Doggo
- Race Passive: Increases Physical and Magical damage reduction by +10%, very middling for the character in the first place since it doesn't factor into their strengths, but better than nothing
Ranking: Mid B to Low B

Unknown:
- The best DPS in the game and one of the best in the series, they get so many ATK multipliers from passives, equipment, buffs, etc.
-- Off the top of my head, they can naturally get a 3x multiplier to their ATK stat from optimal passives and equipment
-- Makes Yolnaya look like an amateur with how much damage they can burst out
- She also comes with an HP lifesteal/tanking mechanic. Race Passive: One of their passives grants +30% to ATK and quadruples their speed if their HP is below 75%. Since Unknown will basically outspeed anything, they can use Mana Grasp to heal back to full, tank an enemy attack that brings them below 75% HP, and then regain the passive effect. Rinse and repeat until the enemy dies.
- Personal Accessory gives them a huge +50% HP buffer along with reducing their HP by 25% each turn, making it so much easier to activate their passives and maintain their gimmicks throughout the battle.
-- You can also have Unknown take damage in other battles before facing a boss, bringing her below the HP threshold to activate the passive. This means the Personal Accessory is not required to start activating the passive, and you can sub in an ATK-boosting accessory to make Unknown deal even more damage.
- Special skill has the best base Power multipliers in the series: 2500 Power Physical attack that can be stacked with elements to deal calamitous damage. There's a condition that necessitates using this skill below 50% HP, but that's super easy to set up and there's a whole bunch of other defensive options that can keep Unknown safe at 1 HP.
Ranking: Low S

Dragon:
- High-value DPS that can act three times per turn (Race Passive) in exchange for her always being in the autobattle state
-- Can theoretically be consistent each turn: the best case scenario for her would be spamming Breakdust 3 times in a turn to perform what's essentially a 600 Power DEF-piercing skill
-- Unfortunately, her damage can be inconsistent when attempting to target weaknesses since she randomly uses Fire moves that might not affect the enemy that well
-- Autobattling is an issue when Hakika removed the "Kept" skills function. This used to be able to manipulate the AI into only performing the moves that you want, like with Freestyle back in Blight or Lucky One in Asylum. But with this gone, the only AI manipulation possible in IR relies on context triggers like when allies are low on HP, in this case the Dragon can become an effective healer by healing 3 times per turn.
-- AI can't cast weapon skills that have buffs when autobattling, this is a big strike against her when she can't use the Greatsword to get a 40% ATK boost
- Easy to run into a dilemma: equip the Personal Accessory to make them more flexible (Fire element + controllable attacks), or invest everything into ATK and hope that the Dragon casts strong skills in the turn?
-- Personal Accessory isn't worth losing out on potential ATK accessories and extra actions.
- Special Skill is not good compared to those from other party members. It's a boring 600 Power sure-hit nonelemental physical attack that hits all enemies, does nothing more than that.
- She can become immensely neutered by certain postgame bosses that have counters.
- Still, she's a powerful attacker for the endgame and postgame, certainly won't be anything near Unknown but she's better than the attackers like Visplord
Ranking: Mid A

Shark:
- The progenitor of element stacking (abusing elemental boosts from a set of elements, and then pairing this with another element that targets an enemy's weakness)
- She's an attacker that leans towards strong ATK/DEF stats with serviceable HP and MDEF
- Race Passive: Can counterattack after being attacked with a base 100 Power certain hit skill. Unfortunately, the counterattack passive scales off DEF, which makes it harder to build for if Shark is built towards ATK. Plus it only triggers on Physical attacks
-- Doesn't seem like it's physical or magical, so it cannot get boosts from element stacking
-- The counterattack will almost always get outdamaged by Shark's physical attacks, so this thing is only a nice thing to have once in a while
-- Guard -> counterattack is a decent gimmick at times
- Great Wave is an awesome skill that boosts all Water attacks from the party by +20% for 8 turns
-- This works for Water element-stacked attacks or skills that were innately Water element
-- Combos amazingly well with the Scylla with her boosted crits and Water element attacks
-- The postgame weapon that grants Water element is perfect for element stacking Water onto nonelemental attacks
- Personal Accessory is great for granting Water element to her attacks, combine this with Great Wave and physical nonelemental attacks
- Special skill is good, not the best but element stacking helps a bit, boosting it from 1200 Power to 1440 Power
-- Special skill used to be unable to crit in earlier versions of the game, making it fairly terrible when combined with the Greatsword
- Without element stacking, she'd be a pretty middling character. As of now, she's pretty close to the Dragon in terms of usability
Ranking: Mid A

Robo Knight:
- Tied with Shadow as one of the 2 best tanks in the game and series, mainly due to her supremely strong passive that allows her to redirect physical and magical attacks when above 80% HP
-- It's simple to have her turtle damage by having her Guard for 1 turn, or use her TP skill Super Guard that reduces damage taken by -80% for a turn.
-- It does have a weakness in that it doesn't work against sure-hit attacks, this is unfortunately relevant against the strongest bosses in the game, like Tyrant
-- She has a build where you can have her reach 100% physical evasion semi-permanently: single-target, random-target, AoE attacks don't matter anymore if they're physical, she'll redirect the attacks to herself then immediately dodge them. With the Shadow's special skill, she'll also be able to reach 100% Magic evasion, giving her almost complete invincibility for a limited time. This is one of the best tank performances in the series with how her redirection works.
-- For some reason, redirection doesn't prevent counter effects from triggering from allies if the Robo Knight uses a skill that affects state of all allies (all party buffs, wide block and other similar effects, etc.). For example, the Shark usually counterattacks after being hit by a physical attack. With the Robo Knight, a physical AoE can be redirected away from the shark, and although the shark doesn't take any damage, she will still activate the counterattack as though she were hit by a physical attack.
--- Giving this the name: Redirection Counter Transfer (RCT)
--- Works even when evading
--- This will fail if another buff is cast on the ally that counters after the Robo knight applies a party wide buff. For example, this sequence of actions will fail: Robo Knight buffs, then Shark ally casts Incite, then enemy attacks the Shark (no counterattack is inflicted since the buff overwrites the RCT state)
- Great HP/DEF/MDEF growths, can't ask for anything more.
- Personal Accessory is great for helping her tank even more damage to keep the redirection passive up (+25% DEF and +25% MDEF when guarding)
- Special skill is versatile, can slap it on any turn to ignore damage for the whole party
-- Might have a few corner case weaknesses: it doesn't work against sure-hit attacks and ailments can still be inflicted on party members
- Race Passive:  Increased Thunder element resistance by +25% and Fire element resistance down by -25%, while nice, they can pretty much tank everything with their passive and defenses, although this does give them a huge weakness against Tyrant, again
Ranking: Mid S

Scylla:
- Magic attacker with strong inherent traits that lend to a effective charge playstyle
- She has an inherent buff called Omen granted at the start of each battle, this boosts crit damage by +50%, so crits go from 1.5x damage to 2.25x damage
-- Add in the Strain skill crystal to get guaranteed crits after charging for a turn, or increase her crit rate with buffs from the party
-- Has a huge burst skill called Aqua Star, 60 TP skill that goes from 400 Power to 800 Power if Omen is active. Once used, it removes Omen. With a crit, this skill can potentially become an 1800 Power skill
- Personal Accessory is very situational, only really good for restoring resources mid-battle for back-to-back fights
-- So it works well to give your party sustainability in the endurance dungeon
-- Otherwise, you hold onto Omen to keep the critical damage bonus
- Race Passive: 5% Magic Reflection is super situational, although you can get some funny results when reflecting magic back to a boss that inflicts unique debuffs
-- Sry Ta-who-ti...
- Great synergy with other party members that boost Water damage, especially with Magical attackers since they have a skill that grants a MATK+ buff for themselves and another ally in the party, awesome for bursting with Magical damage
- Special skill is very good, 1000 Power Water-element damage and it refreshes the Omen buff if it's already been removed in battle. Makes her playstyle even more sustainable over the course of the battle.
Ranking: High A to Mid A

Murder Maiden:
- One-trick pony attacker that doesn't perform their trick well
- Her main gimmick is to increase her normal attack hit count using her passive, equipment, and special skill.
-- Can get up to 4 attacks, but this comes at the cost of setting her max SP to 0 if you give her the Personal Accessory
--- You'll be forced to use TP skills with her (at least the Greatsword still matches up well for her)
-- Therefore, you just have her get up to 3 attacks so that she doesn't neuter her flexibility
-- Normal attack is at 120 Power, so she can get up to 360 Power or 480 Power through her normal attacks
-- Each normal attack gives back 5 TP, so with 4 attacks, she can attack to "regen" 20 TP per turn
--- Can double this with the TP gain armor, so she can get 40 TP back per turn
- With her TP gain, she could theoretically be very good at using TP skills to attack, unfortunately, attacking TP skills are far and few for her inherent skills (Killing Zone is not good for attacking) and actual weapon skills (again, she'll probably just run the Greatsword)
- Will also need to waste turns reapplying buffs since she can't keep them up naturally, unlike Unknown
- Her inherent traits aren't too good, for some reason she needs to use a 20 TP skill to apply a buff that increases her crit rate by +20% and ATK by +20%
-- Crit rate is stuck at a middling base 5%
- Really don't like her inflexibility and gimmick
- Only reason she avoids Low C to High D tier is because of Killing Zone: You can break the midgame level curve by first getting her in Torion, and then rush to the volcano with strong enemies. You can then inflict Instant Death on those enemies with Killing Zone to get free level ups as long as the Murder Maiden doesn't get blown up by their attacks
- Race Passive: Has a 5% chance to counter 1 or more hits from an enemy physical attack, negligible
Ranking: High C to Mid C

Visplord:
- Slow Yolnaya-like attacker that likewise takes time to setup for their gimmick
- Race Passive: Inherent gimmick as a buff that has 5 different states, depending on the tier number for each state, their ATK will be boosted by +8% * tier number
-- Tiers will last three turns before counting down to the next lower state, after the 1st tier, the buff will be removed
-- One of their attacks is tripled in Power from 200 -> 600 as long as the Visplord is in the 1st tier state
- Wild Soul is a 50 TP skill that grants them the 5th tier state, meaning they'll get a 40% ATK boost before the buff starts counting down
- Unfortunately, their gimmick is slow to setup and reap the benefits from, especially the tier 1 effect
- You'll mostly just benefit from having a large attack boost at the beginning from Wild Soul, then hopefully take advantage of the ATK boosts over time
-- You'll also need to time the Visplord's attacks well with your party's turn rotation in battle to get the most out of them
- Personal Accessory requires giving them Mana, so this brings them down quite a bit
-- It's good though, since it boosts the Power of skills by +25%.
- Special skill combos well with Wild Soul (40% ATK boost with a 1400 Power skill that's boosted by the Personal Accessory), peak damage of about 610,000 with just Visplord's buffs
Ranking: Mid B

Cow:
- Decent early-midgame attacker that doesn't have very good ATK multipliers
-- Due to this, they struggle in the endgame and postgame
- Has a unique buff that increases the power of their 20 TP attacking skill, it also guarantees that this attack will crit, so it goes from 250 Power -> 375 Power
- Other than this, they don't stick out anywhere else attack-wise. Need skill crystals to help their middling skill pool.
- They're also very TP-reliant for their best skills, makes it tricky to get their TP back to max without reckless suicide strats
- Personal Accessory is not good, only grants the unique buff at the start of battle. Doing scenes is required to get this accessory, so the investment doesn't make this worthwhile
- With the special skill, things get a little better. They get an additional action for 5 turns at the cost of losing 10% SP per turn. Makes them slightly more flexible and their DPS can go up to 3750 Power over 5 turns in the absolute best case.
-- Losing 10% SP per turn is very detrimental without some form of SP regen mitigating the decay
- Due to how limited this character is, they lack potential that a lot of other IR characters have.
- Race Passive: Grants a +20% ATK buff at the start of battle, it's okay, at least this saves a turn and works efficiently in the endurance dungeon
Ranking: High C

Oil Slime:
- Magic attacker with the unique gimmick of inflicting debuffs to make enemies weak to Fire
-- Sounds good in theory, but elemental weaknesses are subject to a limitation: only the elemental weakness with the highest damage multiplier is factored into the damage calculation, and all other lesser multipliers are removed
--- Enemies with inherent elemental weaknesses usually have their weakness multipliers set at 1.4x or 1.5x damage taken, so the Oil Slime's Fire-element debuffs usually don't exceed those multipliers, and as a result, the debuffs are useless in increasing damage
-- The gimmick can still be good if you're not trying to target natural elemental weaknesses, go wild with a party geared towards Fire-element damage and you'll still see good results
-- Just don't expect to see the kind of damage you'd get from element stacking, like from the Shark
-- The debuff gimmick is good for making enemies that were already weak to Fire even more weak to jack up damage by a ton
- Race Passive: Increase Water element resistance by +50% but quadruples Fire element damage taken, makes them a decently workable tank against Water element enemies, be careful around the Fire ones
- Personal Accessory is pretty good for them, additional SP and +30% damage on their Fire attacks
- With their special skill, you inflict a permanent 25% Fire weakness debuff on the enemy that can stack with other debuffs. In this case, applying multiple fire elemental weaknesses will usually exceed other natural elemental weaknesses. So this makes targeting Fire elemental weaknesses a little more viable.
- Overall, this is a character heavily reliant on party comp to succeed. Without the mechanic to open up weaknesses, the Oil Slime isn't a super powerful Magical attacker since they require constantly applying the Fire-element debuff. Their finisher is great, but it requires removing the debuff to inflict damage.
Ranking: High C

Fire spirit:
- Physical attacker that scales off MATK for damage, they have a mechanic to recover TP after certain actions in their skill pool
-- As they deal physical damage, this can combo well with some of the other special skills from other party members
-- Unfortunately, the TP gain armor doesn't increase their TP gain
- Not really much to say about them, good in Fire-inclined parties, can use a 25 TP skill to inflict damage to all enemies, and then increase their Fire attacks by +50% on the next turn
- While Personal Accessory is great for pushing them towards a TP-playstyle, it gives them the same issue as the Murder Maiden where eventually they'll run out of SP and will have to use TP skills
-- Again, if there were better TP skills on skill crystals, they could have more potential
-- This really hurts when trying to use the Burning Flare skill crystal on them, it's as strong as their strongest TP Fire-element skill, but they won't be able to use Burning Flare if they won't even have the SP to cast it
- Special skill is great for damage bursting with a 1800 Power fire attack, it's possible to combo this into great damage while hitting a weakness
- Race Passive: Preemptive Fire element attacks, it's nice to have for a DPS party member, but it doesn't really factor into their strengths
Ranking: Mid C

Shadow:
- The other best tank in Innocent Rules, they're geared towards evasion for physical and magical attacks
- What sets them apart compared to other evasion tanks in the series is that they have a skill called Shadow Gemini that can be cast on any active party member, this skill adds +30% to physical/magical evasion permanently until the ally takes more than 0 damage
-- Immensely good, as this enables many party members to reach 100% physical evasion in most cases combined with Step Force
- It's very easy for them to reach 100% physical evasion, then if there are any Magical attacks that would hit them, they can just use the 50 TP skill to reduce Magical attacks to 0 damage, meaning they keep the Shadow Gemini buff and can continue tanking for free
-- Adding support from other party members will let them recover TP much more easily (i.e. TP restores from the Harpy)
- Personal Accessory gives them complete nullification against Dark-element attacks, letting them get by certain attacks for free
- Special skill grants +50% physical and magical evasion to the whole party for 3 turns. If you build correctly, the party's basically invincible for 3 turns once this skill is used
- Sets up checkmate scenarios against many of the postgame bosses in Innocent Rules. As long as you fulfill their win conditions for the fight, you'll safely destroy these fights while having the enemy under your complete control
-- One of two sole reasons why most of IR's v1.10 postgame can be done without touching Mana Benefits at all.
- Race Passive: Evasion rate +25%, Increased Dark resistance by +15%, and Light element resistance down by 25%, awesome for the Shadow since they can boost themselves up to 100% physical evasion very easily with their skills, equipment, and passives
Ranking: Mid S

Slime:
- A decent tank that's well-equipped against physical attacks
- They have decent healing capabilities in their 50 TP skill that lets them nullify physical attacks targeting them while also letting them recover 25% HP, and their Personal Accessory that causes them to heal allies when attacked
-- The Personal Accessory effect probably works with RCT so they can constantly heal the party as long as the Robo Knight properly triggers the counter.
- They have pretty good sustainability in the endurance dungeon, where they can draw away attacks and constantly heal allies
- Special skill can somewhat work well against physical attacks that hit the party by reducing Physical damage by -50%, but it's largely inferior to other damage mitigation options from other party members
- They're simple enough, and they get the job done as a tank
- Race Passive:  Increased Fire and Water element resistance by +25% and Thunder element resistance down by -25%, works well with the skill that reduces Fire and Water damage on the party by 20%, putting rings on them will allow them to be a fairly effective tank for multiple elements
Ranking: Mid B

Succubus:
- Another magical attacker specializing in Dark element without much going for them in terms of mechanics
-- Well-rounded for stats, with a spike in MATK
-- No way to element stack Dark-element onto their skills, and they don't really have any useful Magic passives/buffs besides the standard ones
--- Thus they'll have to run with their lacking skill pool
- Two notable skills: Charm inflicts a ATK/MATK -10% debuff on an enemy, while Heart Magic with the skill passive is a 180 Power attack that can absorb enemy HP. It becomes 360 Power if the enemy is inflicted with Charm
-- Few problems here, Charm only lasts 3 turns starting from the turn when it's inflicted
-- This skill combo costs 60 TP to do over 2 turns, they need to commit to the combo, else they'll miss out on getting the most damage
-- Charm has one other use with the Oriental Succubus, that party member needs Charm to be active on an enemy to inflict their inaction debuff on an enemy for 1 turn
--- Could put both Succubi in one party to trade off Charm activations and lean into the mechanics for both
---- Although, this is made less necessary now that Redirection Counter Transfer is possible with the Robo Knight and the Oriental Succubus
- Very TP-reliant just like the Cow to get their skill combos off, so they suffer from the same issues
-- At least they work slightly better for regaining TP by acting as a lifesteal tank
- Personal Accessory only boosts magic by some proportion of Mana benefit invested into them. Probably still their best accessory to equip, since the other options don't give as much MATK
-- However, you need to do scenes to get this accessory, and it requires fully investing in Mana Benefit to get the most out of it.
- Special skill is nice for inflating their stats by 1.5x and makes them take 50% less damage for physical and magical attacks.
-- Statistically, they have all bases covered on offense, defense, and lifesteal healing to function entirely as a self-sufficient party member.
-- However, this only lasts 8 turns, and it's a really simple skill without any other interesting or potential tricks behind it.
- Race Passive: Normal attacks are converted into an SP-draining attack that recovers 10% of the user's max SP, this is questionable since they already have a 3% regen SP passive and they can't normally attack anymore to inflict damage on the enemy
Ranking: Low C

Magician:
- A classic Magical attacker stacking buffs and passives that last indefinitely until the character dies
- Multiple buffs and passives that increase MATK
-- Final skill tree passives boost by +20% and +25%
-- 1 buff increases MATK by +20% but also increases SP costs by +20%
-- 1 buff increases MATK by +20% but reduces their HP by -20%
-- Personal Accessory boosts Power of Magical attacks by another +25%
-- MATK+ buff is another +40%
--- With these effects, they can get a 3.78x multiplier on Magical attacks against an enemy
- Unfortunately, they need to cast spells that have predetermined elements with weak base Power multipliers, so they can't boost their damage even further with element stacking
-- Run the highest tier Magical spells from skill crystals
-- Fiede's Skill Crystal is also good to boost their Dark element attacks when possible
- Can be slow to setup with the amount of buffs that need to be cast, most of them can last for a long time as long as the Magician is safe
- Sustainability is also somewhat problematic, since they'll be using high SP cost attacks
- Race Passive: Increases the duration of MATK buffs by 3 turns, helps the timing for those buffs, but doesn't increase their damage any further, so it's only okay
- Their special skill increases their MATK once again by +25% and reduces SP cost to 0, but what's special is that this is also cast on another party member at the same time.
-- The SP cost benefit is whatever when they have Mana Benefits applied, but the linking effect is great for Magical DPS parties, especially with the Scylla
Ranking: Low B to High C

Oriental Succubus:
- Support character with a slight focus on Magical DPS that had 2 main goals for support: regenerate TP for the party and temporarily bind an enemy's actions for a turn
-- DPS isn't anything too special since this character doesn't get that many effects to boost Magical damage
- They have a unique 200 Power Magical Fire-element attack that inflicts the same Charm debuff on an enemy just like the Succubus can do.
- What sets them apart from the other Succubus is that they have another 80TP Preemptive skill that converts the Charm debuff into the Dazzle debuff. With the Dazzle debuff up, the enemy will not act during a given turn. At the end of that turn, the enemy gains a buff giving complete immunity to Dazzle for 7 turns.
-- In theory, this acts as a reasonable replacement for Bind which got heavily nerfed in Innocent Rules as a 1 time only status ailment per battle and along with being tied to a weapon skill.
--- In practice though, this skill has a few problems unlike Bind in the previous games: it's really annoying getting back to 80 TP consistently with them (considering they need 110 TP to execute the combo in the span of two turns: 30 TP to inflict Charm by themselves, and 80 TP to inflict inaction on the enemy, this can make a case for pairing them up with the Succubus to lower TP costs), the Dazzle debuff has a wonky requirement attached to it to be inflicted, and certain postgame bosses in Innocent Rules won't be consistently locked down (if they have a turn rotation that lasts for 7 turns or less, or even worse, more than 13 turns) since the Dazzle resistance enemy buff makes the cooldown of the skill last too long to be refreshed during turn rotations
- On the other hand, they function fairly well with regenerating TP for the entire party over time
-- Combining their passives and Personal Accessory, they can regenerate 8 TP for all allies as long as they themselves are above 50 TP in a given turn
--- This is pretty critical in certain builds, for example, if we optimally build the Oriental Succubus and Chimera to constantly regenerate TP, it's possible for the Chimera to gain at least 100TP per turn, meaning that they can spam Quasar to inflict a consistent 600 Power Magical nonelemental Attack at the cost of keeping the Oriental Succubus alive
- In short, if your party is focusing on TP and weapon skills, then the Oriental Succubus can make a decent case for a spot as a party member. Just don't expect much from inflicting the inaction debuff as you would with pre-nerf Bind.
- Race passive: Counters an enemy physical attack by inflicting the Charm debuff on them. Normally, this would just be a simple bonus to getting attacked physically and surviving the attack with this character. Then, you can conserve their TP to eventually inflict the inaction debuff on the enemy.
-- However, this becomes significantly safer when RCT is applied from the Robo Knight. Now, the Oriental Succubus can counter with the debuff for free while the Robo Knight deals with damage.
--- This also means the Succubus is redundant for the Charm->Dazzle combo
-- You can now insert the Charm->Dazzle combo more flexibly in the turn rotation by exploiting an enemy's physical attack and casting the Charm debuff in the counter
- Special skill is somewhat interesting as a debuff: For 5 turns, the enemy's ATK/MATK is reduced by -25% and they lose 2% of their HP per turn
-- Seems great for making bosses quite weaker when stacked with other ATK/MATK reducing debuffs and effects, plus at the end of the buff duration, the boss will have lost 10% HP as DoT
--- This might not be the best special skill, but it can be quite good at neutering a boss, and you can treat bosses as only having 90% max HP throughout the fight with the HP decay effect
Ranking: Low B

Snow Woman:
- Physical attacker that scales off MATK for damage, with an emphasis on using TP for some of their strongest skills
-- Kind of like the dual opposite in terms of elements to the Fire Spirit's TP-reliant Physical attacks that scale off MATK
--- Both chars are usually great at hitting both damage types (Physical and Magical) with one stat since they can run their own skills for Physical damage, and powerful Magical skill crystals on the other end
--- While she does have a mechanic to recover TP after hitting enemies like the Fire Spirit, she doesn't recover as much passively as that character does
---- This mechanic is only okay for boss battles since there's usually only 1 boss on the field, but it can be fairly sustainable for normal encounters
- On the other hand, this character has an unique buff in their skill tree that lets them increase their MATK for each incremented tier that buff is currently at
-- Like the Visplord's tier-wise buffs, but the buff increases in tiers over time instead of degrading
-- At max, the Snow Woman can gain a +30% to their MATK after 9 turns in battle
--- This is slow, but unlike the Visplord's buff, this is permanent until the Snow Woman dies
-- Has a 45 TP skill that is their strongest Ice Physical attack in their repertoire scaling with MATK, it also reapplies the unique tier buff if it's somehow removed by them dying
- Their Personal Accessory cuts the time to increment their unique buff by 2 turns, meaning they can reach the Tier 3 MATK boost by turn 5
-- While it's great for speeding up the time it takes for them to get online, this doesn't boost anything further like MATK or TP gain
- Great potential as a MATK attacker, but using their TP skills is quite costly as TP always has an upper bound of 100 at any time, so they may only be able to do so much in 1 turn if they have the TP for it
- Can build towards 100% physical evasion with equipment and passives
- Race Passive: Increases MATK and critical rate by +10%, just makes their MATK and DPS in general even better, no complaints here
- Special skill increases their Ice-element damage by +20% and grants them an extra action for 4 turns
-- Having extra actions is always amazing for characters, but it's a little bit overbearing for ones that rely on TP a lot
-- You'll probably burn through the Snow Woman's TP very quickly if you're attempting to use their TP skills along with their special skill's effect, so TP regen support is a must have if you're spamming their strongest inherent skill
-- One solution is to run Ice Age World, the 300 Power Magical Ice AoE and just spam that since it has the same potency as their strongest TP skill
-- Theoretically, this skill has potential to synergize with element stacking, but there's just not enough powerful nonelemental Magical attacks to take advantage of the +20% ice boost along with any other equipment/passives that grant Ice-element damage
Ranking: Mid B to Low B

Chimera:
- L E T ' S Q U A S A R ! ! !
- This truly is Chimera Rules.
- Without a doubt, the strongest character in maingame and base postgame before the v1.10 update of Innocent Rules
-- One reason is due to how early you can get them, it's very realistic to swipe them as early as having access to the 2nd region you can go to in-game
--- At that point, they'll be level 50, crippling the game's level curve
- But they wouldn't be good if getting them early at a high level was the only thing they had going for them
- Here's the general gameplan for the Chimera: Spam powerful high SP-cost Magical attacks on the enemy like the final tier Magical spells to trigger their unique passive. When the Chimera's SP is less than 1% of max, this activates a special buff to regen 75 TP per turn
-- Leading to the next step: Once Chimera gets back to 100 TP, they'll use the most powerful skill in their skillset: Quasar, a 600 Power nonelemental Magical attack that hits all enemies on the opposing side
--- Since this attack is nonelemental, it benefits from hitting weaknesses and can be element stacked
-- At a certain point, the Chimera will alternate between spamming a powerful 80 TP Magical attack with one of the postgame weapons and casting Quasar to deal huge, consistent damage against enemies
- They have very well-balanced stats with a spike in MATK, generally you can expect them to survive attacks fairly easily and unleash strong attacks
- It may seem somewhat cumbersome to trigger their passive by reducing their SP to less than 1%, but there are ways to make the process much simpler and abusable
-- For example, the Bloody Collar accessory gives them a extra +25% HP at the cost of reducing their max SP by 50%, this makes their survivability better while making it easier to reduce their SP to near nil
-- Also, nothing is really stopping the Chimera from blowing all their SP in enemy encounters so that they can start with the unique buff during boss battles. In most cases this works as long as the game doesn't automatically heal the entire party before the boss fight
-- Here's an interesting trick for base postgame: Chimera at Level 99 with Mana Benefit Level 6 (AKA the MB level she joins your party without any investment) has 340 total SP. If you give her the Bloody Collar to slash her total SP by 50%, it becomes 170 SP. Then, equip the Flower Dress armor to increase her SP to 180.
--- By doing this, you've set Chimera up with the fastest way to trigger the unique passive in just 3 turns. The highest tier Magical attacks cost 60 SP. Chimera can spam these attacks for the first 3 turns, after she executes the 3rd Magical attack on the 3rd turn, she'll be left with 0 SP, triggering her unique passive to regen 75 TP at the start of the next turn.
---- This is still suboptimal in the scenarios where you can lower Chimera's SP to 0 before boss battles that don't automatically heal you. In those cases, you should optimize for TP gain with weapons, armors, and accessories.
---- However, in the battles that automatically heal your party to full HP/SP, I highly recommend this method to get Quasar online ASAP. Just be careful of Chimera's defenses since they'll be lower than usual with the Flower Dress.
-- In general, you can invest into their Mana Benefit level sparingly to manipulate their total SP, try to get their total SP as infinitesimally above a multiple of 60 so that they can spam the highest tier Magical attacks and activate their unique passive more quickly.
- Their Personal Accessory reduces SP costs by 50% but makes them lose 50 TP per turn. Honestly, this is terrible for their gameplan and general DPS since Quasar is so powerful already. There's not really a justification to use this in one of their accessory slots since it doesn't really help their DPS.
- Race Passive: Counters an enemy attack by inflicting a MDF down debuff on them. Combine this with RCT and the enemy will have a MDEF down debuff applied to them at virtually all times
- Finally, their special skill is a quite powerful 1200 Power Surge Magical attack AoE that reduces their SP by -100% at the end of the turn. Great for DPS and comes with the bonus of instantly triggering their passive during a battle when needed, so you can easily pivot from spamming SP attacks into solely using TP skills
- The maingame and base postgame are not equipped to deal with Chimera's DPS in general, she just steamrolls enemies and bosses without much effort needed from her end
-- Certain party members overtake her in the v1.10 postgame, but she's still a very solid pick especially when you can get her in the endurance dungeon
Ranking: High S

Alraune:
- A support character that should be expected to do their job for healing well, but ends up suffering due to skill system changes and rebalancing in IR
-- A big change IR made for healing is that single heals for HP and SP are usually more potent in healing power and cost-effective, while party heals cost much more SP while also having certain drawbacks.
--- For example, the "Cure All" skill crystal lets the party member heal all allies at 200 Healing Power, unfortunately, this is gotten late in the game while also costing an exorbitant 90 SP to use, also only 1 of these skill crystals exists per playthrough.
--- As another example, other types of party healing only heal a percentage of HP/SP instead of scaling with the Spirit stat and Healing Power, so you'll never really feel fully healed with these skills as HP/SP/Spirit stats grow larger throughout the game
- Now, the Alraune has the latter issue where she focuses on percentage-based healing that runs off TP costs. She has a 30% HP party heal for 30 TP, and a 40 TP skill to heal 50% SP for a single ally.
-- Before even considering the effects of these skills, she is very TP-reliant to use them in the first place and sooner or later she'll quickly run out and need to restore TP somehow.
--- It's awkward to build her to restore TP using passives and equipment, so in the end, it's not really worth approaching these skills to support the party
- She does have a unique passive to convert her normal attack into a 150 Healing Power skill targeting a single ally, her Personal Accessory reduces this to 50 Healing Power but makes it apply to the whole party
-- Decent for cheap sustainability but the Personal Accessory healing is really weak compared to other healing moves
--- Here's a sad example: The Slime's personal accessory is like this, passively healing all allies at 30 Healing Power when she's attacked during a given turn. The difference is huge here, however - That effect from the Slime can activate multiple times per turn as long as some attack hits her, and she can easily tank physical attacks coming her way. The Alraune needs to commit her turn's action to heal all allies using her Personal Accessory's effect. It's ridiculous...
- Has unimpressive stats especially in Spirit, so you won't expect much healing from her other skills, she relies on the other party members having high Spirit to heal them
- Here's the killer reality for her: Because of the skill crystal system, many of her healing skills are already available to other party members that have much better stats, better passives and Personal Accessory effects, and generally more roles to play besides a healer during fights. Buffing, healing, attacking, supporting, etc., every skill and passive that she inherently has is superseded by other party members using skill crystals. She is absolutely extraneous compared to most of IR's party members, and this diversification of the skill system in Innocent Rules has unfortunately killed off many reasons to run her over other party members.
- Race Passive: Restores 5% SP per turn, sigh... doesn't help their role whatsoever since they already have a skill to regen SP
- Special skill grants 10% regen for HP and SP for the rest of the battle, this is still the same issue they have regarding percentage-based heals, but at least this is permanent. Although, blowing a party member slot just for this special skill is terrible compared to the many better options you can take for your party.
- All in all, this is a party member that's thoroughly outclassed by every other party member in the series, there's no good reason to ever run her, and the worst you can do in an RPG like this is make choices completely inconsequential for the party.
Ranking: The Worst

Cerberus:
- A very interesting tank/attacker that focuses on using the MDEF and DEF stats for different purposes
-- For MDEF, this is one of their highest stats and they're well equipped to neuter Magical attacks that are launched at them and the party. They have a 50 TP preemptive skill that reduces the MATK stat of all enemies by 50% for a turn.
--- Really nice against some of the postgame bosses, especially in the endurance dungeon, that focus on Magical attacks. You can basically sterilize some of the most powerful Magical attacks launched from them using the MATK reduction skill.
-- On the other hand, their DEF stat is good but not as high as their MDEF stat. In exchange, they have a 450 Power, 50 TP nonelemental Physical attack that scales off the DEF stat. This gives them a great reason to build their DEF so that they can do high damage with this skill.
--- Since it's nonelemental, this skill can be imbued with elements, further increasing its damage
--- While DEF won't scale as quickly as the ATK stat when equipping various weapons, buffs and debuffs for improving DEF can still help in increasing this skill's damage.
--- Personal Accessory increases this skill's Power by +50%, it's now a 675 Power move that can be spammed as long as you have the TP for it. It's quite great if you're building towards this skill
- Immune to debuffs, always great for tank characters
- Also immune to crits, which can be situationally good as well
- Race Passive: Allows the Cerberus to endure an attack that would kill them and revives them with 50% HP after the attack has executed, this can activate twice per battle. This a pretty great race passive for a tank as it allows them to have powerful longevity given that they can technically die twice and then get automatically revived. It definitely preserves momentum as you won't need to spend additional actions reviving and healing the Cerberus.
-- There's a couple of drawbacks to revive effects like these: 1. Buffs and Debuffs will get wiped off after the revive occurs and 2. If the Cerberus hasn't acted yet when the revive procs, then their turn's action gets cancelled and they won't do anything else for the rest of the turn.
- Special skill: Preemptive skill that reduces all enemies' MATK by -50% for 3 turns. Makes their anti-Magic tank role even better as you can essentially destroy any means the enemy has for inflicting magical damage for quite a few turns by proactively applying the 50 TP magic debuff skill and this special skill.
- Overall, a great tank character with interesting characteristics, no complaints at all
Ranking: Low A

Mushroom:
- A supportive Magical DPS that can play quite a few roles at once and be effective at all of them
- Has a 300 Power 40 TP skill that restores HP for an party member while also granting them ATK+ and MATK+ buffs, this is a pretty strong healing skill with an amazing effect
-- Interestingly, this is coded with an Earth-element attribute, so this works in tandem with the Mushroom's other strengths to make the skill fairly powerful
-- PSA: Because this is one of the few, if not only, elemental-type healing skills in the game/series, Earth resistance will reduce the heal amount by a percentage of the amount you would usually heal
--- i.e. If you have a 50% resistance to Earth, then this skill would only heal 50% of the normal amount of healing applied to other neutrally resistant party members
--- Particularly relevant when certain party members have passives that increase their Earth resistance like the Doggo, Harpy, etc.
--- Significant when you equip the elemental rings, especially the Rainbow Ring. Expect to see neutered healing for a character that equips these rings and is healed by this skill
- Their Personal Accessory boosts the Power of all Earth-element skills by +50% and negates Stun for them
-- Awesome effect, all of their attacking Earth skills are boosted by a significant amount, works wonders when they're using Earth Shining, the 300 Power Magical Earth attack
-- This also applies to their 40 TP Heal Skill, now it's a great 450 Power healing skill for your allies
- Race Passive: Can cast Earth skills preemptively, normally this would be situational like the other preemptive cast effects, but the Mushroom has so much synergy with anything that's Earth-element, so this is pretty good at making those skills fast and reliable.
- Special skill: 1000 Power Magical Earth AoE on all enemies, then it inflicts a temporary effect where the next Magical damage inflicted on the enemies is increased by +50%. This only works on the next magical attack, but you can sit on this for as long as you want until the next Magical attack hits.
-- This has great potential to be used for burst damage with Magically-inclined/elemental parties, I could see this being great with element stacking with the Shark + using Scylla/Chimera for huge Magical damage
-- Downside is that this exists next to the Barbarian's skill of increasing Physical and Magical damage for the turn by +45%, but I suppose the Earth-element attack is designed to supplement the damage increase effect for the mushroom
- Good balance of Magical attacks, healing skills, and buff capabilities, they have great value throughout the game
Ranking: Low A to High B

Harpy:
- A supportive Physical DPS with an insanely good passive and great synergy with many parties in the game
- She can use a 25 TP skill that basically transfers her 25 TP onto another ally
-- Great for TP-reliant parties, since the other options for restoring TP come at the costs of commitment and investment needed: Defending only restores 10 TP naturally, while normally attacking only gives you 5 per attack
- Has a passive that makes all her skills gain a preemptive property, giving them high inherent speed compared to most other skills in the game
-- This is amazing when she Incites an enemy. Essentially, the passive restores the benefit Incite had in the previous games back when it also activated preemptively.
-- This combos well with many other debuffs, buffs, and healing on skill crystals in the game, allowing the party to get boosted before the enemy takes any action.
- Her preemptive passive for skills has great timing with certain other skills, like the Shadow's 50 TP Magic nullification skill
-- Let's say the Shadow uses the nullification skill and the Harpy uses her TP transfer skill on the Shadow. In this scenario, the nullification skill will activate first, and then the Harpy's preemptive passive is slow enough to make the TP transfer skill activate after the nullification but before any other actions, so she'll be able to cleanly regenerate the Shadow's TP in 1 turn
- Personal Accessory grants Thunder element to her nonelemental attacks and boosts Thunder-element attacks by +50%
-- There's definitely potential for making her a Physical attacker since she just needs 1 Accessory to start element stacking, also combos well with other element stacking methods like with the Shark and the Water element
- Race Passive: Increases Earth resistance by +20% at the cost of losing -2% SP per turn. The Earth resistance is... nice? But is it really worth the cost of losing SP per turn? Due to this, she will need to rely on regen and SP-restoring items to ameliorate this flaw, especially for long-term battles
- Special skill instantly recovers 100 TP for all allies, and it doesn't take up a turn at all. It's an above-average special skill for TP reliant parties, and you can get some good effects from it, but other special skills have more tempting effects over this one.
- Technically a one-trick pony, but this is one trick that performs well in leading up to many other tricks
Ranking: Mid A to Low A

Ant Queen:
- A character with powerful support capabilities with their unique buffs boosting the party
- "Dignity" is a self-applied buff that increases the DEF/MDEF of all allies by +20% while granting 5% HP regen per turn
-- It's separate from every other defensive buff in the game so go wild stacking all of them together
-- Regen is awesome too, get some more HP regen effects throughout the party and they should stay well-healed for most of the battle
- "Decree" is another self-applied buff that is passively activated when the Ant Queen's current HP is at least 80% to max, this grants ATK/MATK +20% and 5% SP regen per turn
-- It's another amazing buff that's the dual opposite of Dignity, again stack buffs and regen together, and you'll have a very successful time shredding the enemy to bits
-- A niche conflict might result from this when pairing the Chimera with the Ant Queen, since you'll want the Chimera to have 0 SP most of the time to abuse Singularity, it can be worked around but you'll need a lot more commitment to making both party members work well together
- Has a unique 50 TP skill that zeroes out all enemies' AGI for 3 turns
-- Too good for turn manipulation, outside of preemptive skills being launched from the enemy, treat this as making all the skills from the party preemptive over the enemy for 3 turns
- Personal accessory permanently boosts all allies' ATK and MATK by +5%. This is a no-brainer, just equip this and watch it combo well with her other buffs
- Race Passive: This applies the Dignity buff at the start of battle, which is quite good to put the party in a well-guarded initial state against many of the stronger enemies in the game
- Her Special skill restores all characters to full HP while also giving them a buff that doubles their max HP
-- Well, by using this special skill, many parties in IR will have a lot more leeway to tank attacks and heal off them fairly easily, you should not worry much about the party's survivability once you can get this off along with the many other buffs the Ant Queen can cast
-- Combos in a niche way with the Broken Robot's unique skills
- This is a great character that takes buff stacking to the limit to give the party a statistical advantage in many fights. Can't go wrong with them
Ranking: Mid A to Low A

Cockroach:
- A tank masquerading as a support character, make no mistake, if you build them correctly they'll be unkillable with their regen passives, evasion strats, and defensive skills they can abuse against the enemy
- Has a 50 TP skill that applies a permanent debuff on the enemy that reduces their ATK and MATK by 5%
-- Stack this with other attack debuffs and this will go a long way in mitigating the enemy's offense
- On the other hand, they have another 50 TP skill that reduces all enemies' accuracy by -50%
-- Unfortunately, this is not worth using. Accuracy can never be reduced to 0 as these types of debuffs are multiplicative, plus the Cockroach has better options to build up their Physical evasion over running debuffs like these.
-- Plus, there's an annoying condition that requires them to be in the Hide status, which runs counter to any evasion strategies that are run for them
- Personal Accessory grants them 15% HP regen per turn and the Hide buff at the start of each battle
-- Hide buff is whatever, but that 15% HP regen can be easily stacked with other equipment/passive HP regen effects to make Cockroach almost always healthy
- Regen Passive: If HP is less then 40%, they gain a buff that gives them 40% HP regen per turn. Buff is removed once they heal beyond 40%.
-- Combining this passive with other effects from equipment and accessories only equipped on the Cockroach, they can get up to 73% HP regen at low HP
-- As long as they don't get instakilled by overkill attacks, they'll usually tank an attack, get to low HP, regen, and pretty much heal back to when they were healthy beforehand
- Race Passive: Gain +30% Physical Evasion at the cost of taking +15% more damage from Physical attacks
-- Well, now the Cockroach has 35% natural Physical evasion, making it a lot easier for them to reach 100% Physical Evasion than many of the other characters
-- Once they're evading every Physical attack, it's a cinch for them to just keep piling on buffs on the party and debuffs on the enemy, and control the enemy's aggro with Incite
- Special skill permanently doubles their AGI stat, reduces their ATK and MATK by -80%, but gives them an extra action for the rest of the battle
-- A tank that can permanently have two turns in battle, hmm... am I using Auris?
--- The comparison goes even further considering there are skill crystals that scale off DEF or MDEF
-- Obviously, this is an incredible skill that makes them basically do whatever they want at double efficiency per turn: regenning, evasion tanking, buffing, debuffing, healing, etc. Plus, the Cockroach also gets the bonus of outspeeding everything that's not preemptive with such high AGI. It's such a strong skill that I can definitely see why Hakika restricted the special skills to Mana benefit level 10.
- Only janky quality: you'll have to invest in using a cockroach...
-- No judgment here tho, they have some of the best qualities any tank would want in the series
Ranking: Mid A

Snake:
- A somewhat middling supporting character with a gimmick for inflicting Ice element weakness debuffs, basically analogous to the Oil Slime
- They have a passive that inflicts an Ice weakness debuff on an enemy for 5 turns when they use their normal attack, this makes enemies take +25% more damage from Ice attacks
-- Again, this has the same problems for inflicting elemental weaknesses as with the Oil Slime, elemental weakness damage is only calculated once with the greatest multiplier factored in
-- So if this Ice weakness debuff doesn't surpass the bonus damage given from inherent elemental weaknesses, then the debuff won't increase damage
-- But as always, it's amazing for exponentially increasing damage against bosses that are already weak to Ice
- Has an 80 TP skill that converts any current Ice Weakness 1 debuff inflicted on an enemy to Ice Weakness 2, the enemy now takes +50% more damage from Ice attacks
-- This resets the duration of the debuff to be at 4 turns, so it's optimal to keep attacking the enemy at Ice Weakness 1, then convert the debuff once the counter reaches 1 turn left
-- Quite a sizable elemental weakness debuff, but this again can conflict with other elemental weaknesses if this Ice weakness debuff doesn't apply a higher damage bonus than inherent elemental weaknesses
-- At least it's more potent than the weakness debuff that the Oil Slime uses, if we're not factoring in other special skills
- Personal Accessory grants them Ice element for nonelemental attacks and increases the Power of Ice attacks by +50%.
-- Just like any other form of element stacking, it gives them great potential for damage if the party builds towards it.
- Has somewhat low stats, so they'll need to compensate by abusing their skills and passives
- Race Passive: Increases Ice element resistance by +25% in exchange for reducing Fire element resistance by -25%
-- Nice to have, but that Fire element weakness can be crippling for certain postgame enemies, just not as much as the Oil Slime however
- Their special skill increases the party's ATK/MATK by +10%, and it grants Ice element to all their nonelemental attacks
-- It's a case where a character's special skill becomes the entire reason for why they're good, just like the Barbarian
-- Since everyone in the party can now element stack towards the Ice element with this 1 skill, the Snake's Ice element weakness debuffs become so much better, doubly so if the enemy is already weak to Ice
Ranking: Low B

Zombie:
- Another support character with Magical DPS capabilities that inflicts Elemental weaknesses, this time it's for the Thunder element
- Can use 40 TP to attack with a 200 Power Magical Thunder skill, this inflicts a Thunder elemental weakness debuff that increases Thunder damage taken by +50% for three turns
-- Fairly potent bonus damage without much prior setup, but the duration of the buffs is pretty short at 3 turns starting when it's inflicted
-- Otherwise, this has the same strengths and weaknesses as the other party members that handle the same gimmick
- Leaving that aside, they have a skill that increases the Power of their Thunder-element attacks by +50% for four turns at a shockingly cheap cost of 10 TP.
-- Sounds good, but then you realize this drains 10 TP per turn for them, and the element boost effect for these skills are usually passives on other Personal Accessories
-- It can still be good, considering that this character also gets a passive that already boosts their Thunder damage by +25%, so it's an effective +75% element boost they're getting on their Thunder skills
- Personal Accessory grants them preemptive Thunder attacks and lets them recover 5 TP per turn
-- Normally, this would be pretty underwhelming since there's no Thunder boost, but they already have this property from other passives, buffs, and debuffs, so this just makes Thunder attacks more reliable in terms of speed. Plus the TP regen is great to offset their unique buff's TP decay
- Race Passive: Can revive up to 5 times to 100% max HP in a battle at the cost of losing 50 SP. This only activates when they have at least 50 SP before dying.
-- This is a cool passive that gives them great leeway to recover, makes them into a weird, shifty tank at times, and this is great for the endurance dungeon
--- But, just like the Cerberus, it has drawbacks when reviving: their turn will get cancelled if they haven't moved before reviving, and they'll lose the current buffs and debuffs they have active
- Special skill doubles their MATK and AGI, while also giving them 100% crit rate for 8 turns
-- It's a good special skill to make them into a fast, consistent DPS, plus that guaranteed crit is nice to supplement a huge part of their damage
- This is a cool character that can split themselves between Magical DPS and inflicting Thunder elemental weakness, might be a bit slow to setup, but they're inoffensive
Ranking: Mid B to Low B

Ghost:
- A support character that has some Magical DPS, but overall they're more geared towards longevity with low SP costs and interesting gimmicks
- Has a passive that reduces SP costs by 30%, super good when they're at lower levels, but doesn't factor in as much with investment
- They can use a 50 TP skill to zero out all enemies' MDEF for 1 turn
-- Quite awesome for burst damage with Magical parties, it's no Grim Torture however and doesn't apply to Physical damage. Plus it doesn't last as long and can only be used twice in succession with a full TP bar
- They also have a unique 40 TP skill that applies a Damage over Time debuff on the enemy for 8 turns. The enemy will be damaged with a 100 Power MATK-scaling attack every turn
-- Can't be element stacked to my knowledge, but this is good for inflicting chip damage over time while the Ghost is still supporting other characters
-- Probably influenced Tsue's design later in Thirst, since she's a way more complete character
- Personal Accessory boosts their MATK by +25% and gives them 5% SP regen.
-- It's cute, it lets them lean into their Magical DPS some more and the SP regen is great for giving them a reliable SP pool to use over time.
- Race Passive: Their damage taken is reduced by 50%; however, their SP will be reduced by 5% of the damage taken.
-- This is a really weird passive to give on a character like this, technically they can tank and eventually recover back their SP, but you'll need to get them into a situation that they should tank the damage
-- If you're not careful, they'll tank an attack, lose out on all their SP, and their action will get cancelled if they can't afford the SP costs to use their skills
- Special skill activates preemptively and grants a partywide buff that increases MATK by +50% for 3 turns.
-- This can combo amazingly well with other Magical DPSes, but the duration is so unfortunately short. Still, if you have a place for the Ghost in your party with other Magical damage dealers, this can go a long way for burst damage.
- The Ghost does some cool things, but overall they're still spread thin on the roles they can play. They have their niches though, so they can still work out somewhat well.
Ranking: Low B

Ninja Owl:
- A support character that heavily relies on TP and weapon skills for Physical DPS, they have quite a few properties that make them similar to the Harpy
- First off, they have a unique skill that makes three more weapon skills in repertoire available for the rest of the duration that the buff is up (AKA until they die)
-- No HP/SP/TP cost, but this does cost a turn to setup, which is weird considering quite a few other skills like this activate instantly and don't give up a turn
-- Weapon skill 1 grants a buff for +20% ATK for 5 turns
--- Don't know why this is not unique, it's just the regular ATK/MATK buff, but worse since it costs 20 TP
-- Weapon skill 2 is a 300 Power Physical attack on one enemy
--- Good power, it's nonelemental so it can be element stacked
-- Weapon skill 3 is a 150 Power Physical attack on all enemies
--- Eh, it works as an AoE I guess...
- Once any of the above weapon skills are used, this unlocks a 10 TP Physical nonelemental attack that the Ninja Owl can use in the next turn
-- It's 400 Power, so cycling between Weapon Skill 2 and this skill can make the Ninja Owl's DPS quite good
- Passive gives them +10% crit rate and evasion, plus it boosts crit damage by +20%
-- I could see a crit build being pretty good for them
- Race Passive: This passive makes all their weapon skills preemptive
-- Unfortunately, weapon skill pools are quite a bit more selective than general skills, so this passive is a lot more situational than say Harpy's preemptive skill passive
-- Although, this gets you a free preemptive Bind with the Multi-Binder weapon, so it's pretty good in that respect
--- Multi-Binder also increases crit damage by +30%, which pairs well with the crit boost passive
--- And the Multi-Binder gives them a weapon skill to restore TP by 20, so they can do this preemptively
- Can build up to 100% Physical Evasion
- Personal Accessory applies the unique skill buff that makes more weapon skills available at the start of battle. Plus, they get a new weapon skill that restores the party's HP by 25% for 25 TP
-- It helps their issue with setting up for weapon skills, and a preemptive cheap heal is not bad for the party
- Special skill increases the action count of all allies by +1 for the next turn.
-- A basic, but influential skill that always has great implications for the party's action economy if they can instantly double their efficiency in the next turn to do whatever they want
-- Can probably get some crazy damage setups along with other special skills by abusing this
- This character has some cool tricks with weapon skills, if you're willing to put the investment into finding good builds with them, they'll work pretty well for any party
Ranking: Low A to High B

Moth:
- Support/tank/healing character that can do it all, they have many skills that apply great boosts for the party at the cost of commitment to certain actions
- Has a 60 TP unique skill that applies a buff to the Moth, making her unable to act for 3 turns, but all allies will regenerate 50% HP per turn in the duration
-- Well, this is an effective skill to constantly heal off most of the damage the party takes as long as the Moth stays alive and the other party members aren't instakilled
- In addition, they have a 90 TP skill that applies a unique buff on another ally for 3 turns, increasing all their stats by +10% and giving them an extra action to their turns during the buff duration
-- Moth is also unable to act during this buff duration
--- However, if the Moth somehow dies in the timeframe of the buff, they should be able to be revived and act again with minimal issues
-- It's costly, but this is an insane buff that doubles a party member's efficiency at the cost of the Moth's actions. A very valuable buff that can really show its value in some harder fights.
-- Noja 2.0
- Has a unique passive buff that reduces the Physical and Magical damage the party takes by -10% as long as the Moth is alive
- Personal Accessory grants them a similar effect to the Slime's Personal Accessory, every time the Moth is attacked, they'll heal themselves with a 50 Healing Power effect
-- Great for when the Moth is Incite tanking multiple attacks that are aggroed onto them
-- Plus they can control when they want to be Incited at any time: they have a skill that instantly removes the Incite buff without taking their turn.
--- Extremely good for controlling aggro in the party, considering the detrimental effects you get when you run multiple tanks with Incite
---- The targeting is randomized when multiple party members have the Incite buff up among them, so it's not as consistent as the previous games' "Incite Shuffling" where you could easily control which party member inflicted Incite on an enemy
- Race Passive: Immune to Fatigue and Sleep, but their Physical/Magical Evasion is reduced by 100%
-- They are definitely not evading anything anytime soon, but the immunities are quite good
- Special skill revives all allies and restores them back to 100% HP/SP.
-- Can be a great emergency button to help the party recover from unfortunate turns. Other than that, I guess you could use this to sustain the party fairly well as a one-time full restore
- Good gimmicks, great tanking capabilities, and awesome support for the party, they're a quintessential team player
Ranking: Low A